last minute accommodation type websites

Recently we wanted to book a weekend away in a NSW country town, staying at a motel, farmstay or something similar. We headed to Wotif to find what was available for our dates in the town we wanted. We read through the list and investigated a couple, and eventually decided on a farmstay. We were in the process of booking, but found that there was a $4.95 booking fee for using the Wotif site, which personally I'd rather not pay. (Call me cheap, but I like to save where I can!)

I suggested that we check the farmstay's own website to see if there was any difference in the rates. There was! In the end, by phoning and making the booking directly with the farmstay, we saved just under $40 for one night's accommodation. Yes, it cost us a phonecall, but we would have had to be on the phone for an awful long time for us to cancel out that $40 saving!

Also, instead of having to pay the full amount up front, we only had to pay a half-rate deposit upfront.

We did find the "last minute" website useful for browsing a good list of available properties, quickly and easily getting an overview of the ones that interested us, and seeing which were available on the dates we required.

However, it certainly pays to check the establishment's own website if they have one, or even just call them to see if they have cheaper rates than the "last minute accommodation" type websites.

The joys of the Paris Pass

The time has come to sing the praises of that most wonderful of inventions, the Paris Pass. I know that many cities have similar passes, but it is the only one we've actually purchased. We looked into the Lisbon Pass, but quite frankly it is unnecessary. There are no queueing issues in any location in Lisbon - even the most popular sites.

But the Paris Pass is a different matter. We purchased the 4 day pass, which included 4 day public transport passes as well. We purchased 2 adult and 2 children's passes, though naturally the children's passes were much cheaper as they have free entry to all the museums. We got theirs for the transport pass.

Paris Pass is not cheap - initially. However, it provides you entry to dozens of places in and around Paris, and includes all of the most popular museums and places of interest EXCEPT the Eiffel Tower. Once you have visited a few of the sights you have made your money's worth back. If you are only going to visit one or two sights, you might not consider the Pass worthwhile, though there are 2-day passes as well. We used our Paris Pass to get into: the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, Versailles, the Musee du Moyen Age, the Sainte Chapelle, Musee de l'Orangerie, and took the free Seine River cruise that came included with the pass.

In terms of value for money, we definitely got our money's worth.

In terms of saving time, the Pass proved to be priceless.

Everywhere you visit in Paris has a queue. Some of them are long. Most of them are not popular with adults, and even less so with children. The longest we queued was about half an hour to go through the Palais de Justice security prior to entering the Sainte Chapelle. We could have queued for much longer. We simply walked in to the Musee d'Orsay, while the regular ticket line snaked out into the plaza in front of the museum. We got preferential entry into the Musee de l'Orangerie (where the queues were much shorter, but in the rain) - and they seem to limit the number of people in the gallery at any one time. And we didn't join any lines at the Louvre - again we simply walked in.

But the real benefit was seen at Versailles. The day we visited was very hot and sunny. Thousands of people visit Versailles. There is no limit to the number of people who can enter the Palace at any one time (unlike the Schonbrunn in Vienna, or the Alhambra in Granada). Our Paris Pass enabled us to join a very short queue - we were inside in about 10 minutes. The real ticket queue was tragically long. It wended its way up and down the forecourt and was at least 4 hours long. None of it was sheltered from the baking sun. I shudder to think what a waste of time that would have been, and what a ridiculous thing to do - either with or without children.

If only for that one experience, I would have still purchased the Paris Pass. We - all of us - had a fantastic time at Versailles. The Bookworm went nuts with her camera, photographing all the shiny, glittery things she could see (and there's a lot of that sort of thing!). Just to think... we could have spent all that time in a monotonous line with bored, whingey kids.

A word of caution about the transport tickets that come with the pass... Yvette was the custodian of the transport tickets in a pocket of her well designed travel pants. Unbeknownst to us - until it really mattered - the tiny magnetic pocket closures had demagnetised the tickets so they no longer worked at the Metro stations. We were stuck - several times - on railway platforms. And to prove that the Parisians are not as arrogant as their stereotype suggests, we got unsolicited instructions on how to get through the barricade without a functioning ticket from a very helpful woman. Owners of Scottevest with its myriad pockets, some with magnetic closures - beware - this applies to you too!

In short, the Paris Pass was one of the best investments we made for our holiday. We pre-purchased them via the internet from the comfort of our own home and they arrived not long afterwards in the mail. We simply took them with us, and they saved us both time and money wherever we went.

The pleasure is in the planning...

Travelling takes planning. Travelling with kids takes even more planning. I know some people will just cringe at the thought of meticulous planning - it does lack the sort of spontaneity that many travellers enjoy. But with kids, planning can avoid wasting huge amounts of time in queues, travelling between sights and other frustrations.

I love planning the holidays, almost as much as taking the holiday itself.

Here's (roughly) what I do.

1. We decide on a destination. Our current thinking is Greece and Turkey - whittled down from an epic journey through most of Eastern Europe.

2. Then we make a list of all the most worthwhile places to visit. As a guide, I use the UNESCO World Heritage List, and a couple of excellent books: 1001 Historic Sites You Must See Before You Die and 1001 Natural Wonders: You Must See Before You Die. We add to this anything of personal interest - for example, I have made a point of trying to see as many of Michelangelo's works as I can. I think I've only got four to go. We try to get a mix of natural and cultural places so that there's a good balance. We add to that any places that look interesting or unusual from our travel guides. The DK guides are great for this as they are pictorial as well as textual.

3. Get a map, and locate them all on the map.

4. To minimise travel, we find a centrally located cities and towns to form as a base. Sometimes, you just have to drive each day to get around the places you want to see. For example, we stayed in Seville as a base and travelled to Granada and Cordoba as day trips. It just saves repacking the luggage and hauling it around every day, and locating the new accommodation every day.

5. Join the dots. Link sights to their closest base town and estimate how many days will be required in each location, and how much time will be needed to travel between base towns.

6. We often do a lot of tweaking at this stage: trying to re-order the sequence in which we visit sights, or changing the route or direction of travel so that we spend the maximum time seeing the sights and less time on the road (or train / plane etc.)

7. Be prepared to leave something out if you just can't get it in. You will need to prioritise which sights are the "must see" ones, and which are a bonus.

8. Plan "vacant" days. You'll never know what you stumble across once actually travelling. In Quebec, we took an unplanned trip out to Parc Nationale de la Jacques Cartier and had a wonderfully relaxing day walking some of the trails and picnicking by the river.

9. Sometimes you're just going to have to drive (travel by train, etc.) to see those things you want to see. In our planning, we seem to have the uncanny knack of having "must see" sights which are located at the furthest extremities of our destination!

10. Map out the whole trip, including timing for travelling and every sight you want to see.

11. Check the opening hours, times and days for every sight. This is REALLY important so that you know you can actually get into a particular place on the day you are there. Sundays in Europe can be a bit tricky, and watch out for museums closed on Mondays (though some have different closed days).

12. Take into account what your children can cope with: jet lag at the beginning, general "down" time, sleeping, rest times and their walking limit.

13. Book ahead where possible. This limits time in queues - thus minimising fuss from the kids, and you get more time actually enjoying the sights. Where you cannot book ahead (such as the Eiffel Tower), plan to arrive before opening time. We had breakfast at the base of the Eiffel Tower and were first out of the lifts at the top. No fuss for us or the kids. Some useful "book ahead" ideas:

• City Passes (e.g. Paris Pass - www.paris-pass.com) if you're wanting to visit a lot of museums etc.
  
• Individual sights (we prebooked the Alhambra Palaces in Granada)
• Ferries, especially car ferries (we prebooked the Stranraer - Belfast and Wexford - Fishguard ferries)
• Tours which take in a number of places of interest to you
• Hotels / B&Bs / Accommodation if you have special requirements, such as cots, family rooms etc.
• Any shows you might want to see
• Trains which require reservations. We have no experience using Eurail, so I can't comment on that, but we took the New York to Albany Amtrak service and we needed to travel at a specific time so prebooked tickets reduced stress and hassle

14. Map your driving meticulously. I have successfully used Google Maps for driving in Spain and Portugal, and MapQuest for the UK, USA and Quebec. Google Maps was very reliable for driving directions, though it does take a bit of time to figure out the street numbers, names, and scale of distances on the ground. Have a print copy for ease of navigation, and use a tiny font size to keep the whole document as small as possible.

Our last trip to Paris, Spain and Portugal was planned in great detail before we left. Some people wouldn't be comfortable with this, but we found that it worked brilliantly. It reduced our stress over unexpected inconveniences, and made travelling with kids inherently enjoyable. The kids appreciate the element of predictability that planning gives. We felt confident in what we were doing because we didn't have to do any planning on the run.

Queues and kids can be fun!

Queueing and kids can be a nightmare. Plan well, and do everything you can to avoid the queues.

• Anticipate where you might be queueing and get to popular sights early (this means well before opening time). We have done the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, and the Vatican museums early and wasted minimal time lining up for entry.


• Book ahead where possible. We pre-booked our entry to the Alhambra in Spain three-months in advance and it took less than 5 minutes to collect the tickets at the entry. We also pre-booked the two-day hop-on hop-off bus tour in New York because we didn't know what sort of queues we might encounter when we got there (none, as it turned out).


• In cities, buy city passes where possible, as these often enable you to skip the queues completely, or at least give you shorter queues. Kids are often free, so it is your adult tickets you’d be waiting for. The city passes are very economical if you plan to visit lots of popular sights. The Paris Pass (www.paris-pass.com) is worth every cent paid for it, as long as you do go to a number of the sights available: we took 10 minutes to walk into Versailles (held up only by the ubiquitous X-Ray scanning of our backpacks) on a blisteringly hot day, as opposed to the 4 hour ticket queue which we would have faced otherwise.


• Queueing is usually not a problem in locations which are away from peak tourist destinations.


• Transport passes for whole days, or multiple days will mean you can hop on and off transport much more easily, and often travel more cheaply. You may even be able to pre-purchase over the internet. Just be careful to keep the tickets in good condition: our 4-day Paris tickets stopped working after 2 days, and we once had a pointless argument in Melbourne over a train ticket that got folded in half which could not be read in the barrier.


• Keep a snack and drink on hand, in a small backpack (larger bags often have to be left at cloakrooms) for the queueing and post-queueing experience.